Roast duck with apple and blackberries

Nigel Slater is much respected in my kitchen. I've been religiously buying his cookbooks for over a decade now, and his recipes are the first thing I check in the Observer every Sunday morning. There is an ease and simplicity about Slater's recipes that I like - his is the kind of easy and relaxed food I love to cook and eat.

This week, duck with apples and blackberries. I seasoned a couple of duck legs with some salt pounded together with thyme and pepper, and then browned them in a hot pan, the duck's fat oozing into a thin puddle. A peeled and chopped butternut squash was tossed in the seasoned fat, a pair of bay leaves added and the duck laid on top. On went a lid and the dish gently cooked for 50 minutes or so.

Meanwhile, I stewed some Bramley apples with a handful of blackberries, adding a small amount of sugar just to cut through the sharpness of the apples a little without taking away the tang.

The duck was tender and moist, not at all crisp, as it usually is, the meat steamed in it's own juices. The squash had lost it's form to the point of near collapse, and was flavoured by the thyme and the unmistakable gaminess of the duck's fat. The apple and blackberry sauce, added in a small portion as an accompaniment worked well with the duck, the acidity offsetting and balancing its fatty richness.

Nigel Slater's recipe is here.

Chickpeas, bacon and spinach

Sometimes, it's difficult to know what to cook, especially when the fridge is empty and nothing seems to quite fit the bill. It was one of those days where Gordon Ramsey could have turned up with his whole kitchen brigade to cook our dinner and we'd have just mumbled something about not fancying anything on the menu.

I'd almost resigned myself to skipping dinner entirely when I found this post on eats like a girl about a quick stew made from leftovers and random things from the cupboard. I thought, 'hey, I keep chickpeas in case the apocalypse happens and we have to survive without supermarkets, and we've got some bacon, which isn't too far away from chorizo, really, and there's some frozen spinach in the freezer...'

I chopped some bacon up into big chunks and fried it in a hot pan until tinged with brown, adding some chopped onions. The onions softened and in went a drained and rinsed can of chickpeas.

Now the spinach. At this point, I'd like to say that I gently cooked the frozen spinach in a pan, then drained away the excess water, but I didn't, I just threw the frozen chunks into the pan. Bad move, but it all melted and I managed to get rid of the extra water and crisp everything up again. Must remember not to cut corners next time.

I finished the dish with paprika, salt, pepper and a tiny bit of chilli powder for heat.

Excellent with some toast and a simple salad of tomatoes and cucumber on the side.

Moghlai Lamb with Spinach (Paalag Gosht)

I'm a huge fan of Madhur Jaffrey's recipes, which combine great food with a rich appreciation of it's cultural context. An understanding of the way in which food has developed over time adds an extra layer of authenticity, especially with a cuisine as steeped in tradition as that of India. Jaffrey delivers this context flawlessly, combining observations about a dish's heritage with recollections about what it means to her.

This recipe is from Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible, a lofty but not unjustified claim for an authoritative source of information and recipes about the humble curry in all of it's worldwide guises.

Mix 560g of boneless lamb shoulder with 4 teaspoons of finely grated ginger and 7 pulped cloves of garlic and leave to marinate for half an hour. I actually used mutton, on the bone this time, the bones adding a further complexity to the finished dish.

Slice a couple of onions finely and fry in a large pan until golden and crisp. Remove, drain and chop up.

Add the meat to the pan, with it's marinade and half a teaspoon of turmeric, cayenne pepper to suit your need for heat and a teaspoon of salt. Cover and cook for ten minutes, stirring occasionally.

Next, add a tablespoon of yoghurt, stir in and gradually add three more tablespoons, or more if you like a creamier curry. Stir in 450g of fresh or frozen spinach and the fried onions, replace the lid and simmer for fifty minutes, or until tender. Mutton will take a bit longer than lamb.

This is a straightforward dish, easy to prepare and very tasty. It sits happily in the fridge, flavours improving overnight.

Other lamb and mutton recipes:

Mutton tagine

Boddington's at Elland Road

Rumours are flying around the various Leeds United boards that Tetley's is about to be ousted as the official bitter of choice at Elland Road, in favour of - and this is the part that will make any self-respecting Leeds fan explode with indignation - Boddingtons.

That's Boddington's. From Manchester.

Sourdough part V

After a month of preparation, the time has come to bake some bread. My starter has been bubbling away now for a month and tastes and smells of yeast.

Following the Moro recipe, I took 250g of starter and mixed it with 450g of strong white organic flour and 700ml of water. This resulted in a very sloppy dough, more like a thick batter than a traditional bread dough. The recipe indicated that the dough would be moist and that it couldn't be kneaded in the normal way, needing 5 minutes mixing in a mixer instead. The dough/batter was left overnight to prove.

In the morning, the dough had risen, but looked more like the original starter than a normal dough. Another 450g of flour and 3 teaspoons of salt were added and the dough was poured into a couple of bread tins to prove for about 5 hours before baking.

All types of baking hell then broke out, with the dough rising too much and spilling out of the bread tins. It looked flat, too moist and over risen, but I baked it anyway.

The results were OK, but not great. The bread had a heavy and slightly odd texture, with a sticky and unusual feel to it. It tasted good, sour and filling, but wasn't the sort of loaf I was hoping for. There was simply way too much liquid in the recipe.

With about a gallon of fertile starter left, I decided to have another go, this time using a Jamie Oliver recipe. Say what you want about Oliver, but he's got a way with bread - the basic bread recipe from his first book is versatile, dependable and an all round excellent recipe.

Jamie's sourdough recipe is more traditional - I skipped the parts about making the starter and took about 500g of my starter, and added 1kg of flour, about 3 teaspoons of salt and enough water to draw it all together in the mixer into a soft dough. As the starter was quite wet, not much extra water was needed.

The dough was turned out and kneaded for 5 minutes, and then left to prove overnight in a bowl lined with a floured tea towel.

This morning, the dough had more than risen and seemed in danger of collapse. I gently turned it out onto a baking sheet and baked for an hour at 190c.

With some deep sourdough style slashes on the top, this looks more like the real thing and it has a distinct but not overpowering sour taste. The texture is much better - lighter and more open, with a superb crust. The loaf spread a little in the oven (slightly too much water in the mix, maybe?) but the overall results were superb.

bread, sourdough, Moro, Jamie Oliver

Saltaire Brewery beer festival

The Saltaire Festival's beer festival has moved ten minutes walk up the canal to Saltaire Brewery.

Details straight from the Festival website:

Beer Festival at Saltaire Brewery Up to 30 beers from across UK & served through hand pumps from chilled cellar Fri 19th: 4pm - 11pm Sat 20th: 11am - 11pm £2 Entry Fee includes free souvenir glass The Brewery, Dockfield Road, Shpley BD17 7AR

Last year's beer festival was in Victoria Hall, or at least I'm told it was.
We rolled up at the apparently early hour of 7:30pm on the Saturday, to
be told that they'd run out of beer completely during the afternoon.

Either the world's best or worst beer festival. You decide.

Saltaire Brewery, Saltaire festival, beer

Leeds Corn Exchange

The redevelopment of the Leeds Corn Exchange into a world-class food retailing space appears to be floundering badly.

The plan was to move the independent retailers and assorted Goths, Emos, etc on and transform the building into a 'food emporium' with food and food associated retailers taking up the units. Anthony Flinn has taken the entire basement and will open a restaurant, bakery and patisserie there in November, but at the moment, he's the only tenant. Ark and Grin are hanging on upstairs, but the building is essentially empty.

Excuses offered to the Evening Post range from astronomical rent through to nervousness about an unproven location and the credit crunch. The rent does seem very high, and there's no doubt that these are bad times to be expanding or opening a business, but the location is prime, and whilst it hasn't been proven as a food retailing destination, it's certainly a destination in itself, and this must guarantee some level of footfall.

Despite the problems, this remains a great concept for a superb building. Where are the Goths going to go, though?

Leeds Corn Exchange.

Sourdough part IV

I normally have some sort of slightly weird cooking project on the go, but these experiments don't often stretch over four weeks. The saga of the sourdough starter continues, having entered a new and exciting phase last week...the grapes are gone and I'm now carefully feeding the starter up to give it enough strength to make some bread.

The feeding stage lasts for two weeks. It started out in an unpromising way - I ditched the bag of grapes that were used as an initial source of wild yeast and bacteria, leaving behind a foul looking sludge, with a distinct pink tinge and an unpleasant smell that seemed to haunt the kitchen. It looked like a lost cause, but I decided to carry on, discarding 200ml of starter and replacing it with 150ml of water and 100g of organic flour, repeated twice a day. The regular addition of new flour feeds and strengthens the yeast, helping it to grow and multiply.

For the first couple of days, nothing happened, then the bowl erupted into life, with bubbles (actual bubbles!) starting to appear on the surface. After a couple more feeds, the starter seemed to be waiting for it's flour. Now, it seems to be hungry and knows that there's more food to be had.

The feeding process has to last another week, so making the starter will have taken a month from start to finish, quite a journey. The bread had better be good.

Technorati Tags: sourdough, starter, bread